July 17, 2024
Michigan Rep. John James Takes Shots At Biden, Democrats During RNC Speech
James flipped Biden's controversial statement from 2020, saying, 'If you don’t vote for Donald Trump, you ain’t Black.'
During his short speech at the Republican National Convention on July 15, Michigan Rep. John James took several shots at Democrats and compared his service in the U.S. military with Trump surviving an attempted assassination attempt. James appears to be the latest Black Republican ready to be a proxy for the Trump campaign’s Black voter outreach program.
According to Politico, James made a pointed reference to a comment President Joe Biden made while campaigning in 2020. Biden’s remark came during an interview with The Breakfast Club’s Charlemagne tha God. The former Vice President exhorted Black listeners that to vote for Trump was to side against their own Blackness.
During his remarks, James flipped Biden’s statement, saying, “If you don’t vote for Donald Trump, you ain’t Black.” James also stated during his remarks that the American economy was so good under Trump that the Democrats tried to give former President Barack Obama credit for Trump’s achievement.
According to Politico, James, notably, was one of the few Republicans who was willing to criticize Trump publicly over the controversial comments the latter made during his term in office. During that time, the then-candidate for Michigan’s Senate seat attempted to distinguish his race from Trump’s presidential campaign. James told Black community leaders on a video call in 2020 that the two disagreed on “plenty” of issues.
“Plenty, plenty of issues,” James responded. “Everything from cutting Great Lakes funding to ‘sh*thole countries’ to speaking ill of the dead,” which Politico took to be a reference to Trump’s disparagement of the late Sen. John McCain. “I mean, where do you want to start?”
During his speech, however, James appeared to strike a chord that resonates with many Black Republicans and conservatives, that is, that even though racism exists and impacted his father, he and James’ mother never let racism define America for them.
“He and my mother raised me never telling me that this is a racist country, never, never…even though we have…blemishes in our past, even though we have much farther to go, even though they endured racism, it did not define the nation they loved. They taught me I could do anything I set my mind to, they taught me to put the Lord first, always,” James said at the podium.
According to Deadline Detroit, Tim Scott, another surrogate for Trump, was more forceful in his remarks concerning race, pointing the finger at “liberal elites” and the Democratic Party’s leadership in general, during his remarks.
“I know this is going to offend the liberal elites, every time I say it, it offends them. But let me say it one more time: America is not a racist country. No we’re not. But if you were looking for racism today, you’d find it in cities run by Democrats,” Scott said.
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